The highly anticipated Apple iPad mini with Retina Display is now on sale through Apple's online stores in the US, Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore and China. At the time of writing the shipping times were listed as in 1-3 business days for the 16GB and 32GB Wi-Fi-only models. The Wi-Fi + Cellular models were listed as shipping in 5-10 business days for all models, along with the 64GB and 128GB Wi-Fi-only models. Up until now, Apple had provided a nebulous launch window of 'later in November.'

Perhaps surprisingly, Apple did not give the iPad mini with Retina display a special in-store event as it typically does with a new flagship mobile product – both the iPad Air and the iPhone 5s had special launch events, for example. Instead, without any particular fanfare, including no special updates to its online Home page, customers found that when the Apple online store went back online that the iPad mini with Retina display was now available for purchase. The low-key launch coincided with an internal bulletin informing Apple repair staff that that the high-res iPad mini would go on sale on November 11.

The iPad mini with Retina display centers on a 7.9-inch display with a resolution of 2048x1536 at a pixel density of 326ppi. The larger 9.7-inch iPad Air also uses the same display resolution, however, as its pixels are spread over a larger area, its pixel density is 264ppi by comparison. The iPad mini with Retina display also utilizes the same 64-bit 1.3GHz dual-core Apple A7 chip as the iPhone 5s, marking a 5x performance improvement over the original iPad mini released late in 2012. The iPad mini retails at $100 less against each equivalent iPad Air model, starting from $399 and topping out at $829 for a 128GB Wi-Fi + Cellular model. Look out for our first impressions and full review of the iPad mini with Retina display in the next few days.